Since I’ve been on a society-building tangent lately, I’ve decided that I’ll take a crack at our nation’s high school science classes today. Rather than exclusively go over raw scientific facts and concepts, time needs to be dedicated in the science classrooms to how to think like a scientist. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for a complete substitution; balance is necessary, of course. Rote memorization of facts such as the difference between a sedimentary rock and a metamorphic rock can be easily searched, however a mental framework isn’t so easily to just pull up-it needs to be actively cultivated. Much of what I’m about to go over is taught in universities, and that’s the problem; everyone should be taught this mindset, not just college STEM majors. Without further ado, let’s start dissecting (see what I did there?) the curriculum-and as always, make sure to sharpen those pitchforks!
There are some terms that are thrown around in our common lexicon that our science teachers should be allowed to debunk a lot more viscously (I see you being handcuffed by a broken system, science teachers!). Our news outlets love to use the word significant when reporting on new scientific findings; we need to teach the youth that unless it is statistically significant-a t-test was performed with a p-value of less than 0.05-that they can safely disregard the news anchors phrasing. Furthermore, we need to teach students the true meaning of theory. The word theory means highest level of scientific acceptance, colloquially the term is used interchangeably with the term guess. We ought to teach students that the phrase I have a theory as to why [insert thing here] happens usually isn’t a scientifically valid statement, unless it’s backed with a ton of citations. What they usually mean is I have a hypothesis as to why [insert thing here] happens.
Correlation and causation are two concepts that need to be driven into students more; they are similar but not the same. Seemingly every time there is an advancement in science that hits the mainstream news, the study-or rather, the catchy news headlines-touts a correlation. One hypothetical example is a headline of eating eggs daily correlates with heart health. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the consumption of eggs had a direct causal effect on the subject’s heart health, it simply means that the two phenomena moved together in the same direction when the data is graphed. Need more proof? Nicholas Cage movies correlate with higher rates of drowning, yet that doesn’t necessarily mean that Nicholas Cage movies cause people to drown. While this is a bit of a ridiculous example, we see variations of this tactic employed in more subtle ways; we need to arm our nation’s youth how to spot it in the wild, so they won’t be bamboozled.
Sample size is another important concept that absolutely needs to be drilled into our high school students. Admittedly, this is a cross-over from math class, however it is a concept that bears repeating. Seemingly more and more health studies come out that proclaim to have amazing benefits yet they have tiny population sizes, such as this one. We need to instill into our future generations that they simply cannot make population-wide conclusions from studies that have only a few dozen participants. While we’re at it, let’s teach students that health studies featuring only a narrow segment of the population (elderly women, endurance athletes, diabetics, et cetera) should be treated with a grain of salt; at least until they are repeated with a larger and more diverse sample pool.
Going over basic experiment design will be incredibly helpful as well. The main point that needs to be driven home is that an experiment can only have one variable that is manipulated at a time. If more than one variable is manipulated at a time, then scientists lose the ability to discern which variable it was that altered the outcome of the experiment. “But Dan, what does that mean for us normal folk who won’t go on to become scientists?”. Not all of us will wind up in STEM jobs, but nearly all of us will attempt to fix things around the house, whether it would be minor automotive repairs, WIFI routers, printers (grrrr), and so much more. Changing a bunch of settings all at once will essentially guarantee that you’ll have no idea what cured the issue, thus handicapping you next time. In this vein, some scientific thinking would help millions of people.
Another experimental design concept that isn’t hammered home enough in high school science classrooms is the importance of a control group. A great way to tell if a study is legitimate or not is to look for the presence of a control group. The fitness industry loves to peddle supplements that have dubious claims that are supposedly backed by science yet have no control group. We need to teach our youth not to be fooled by nonsense like this.
A fun exercise in the classroom that a savvy science teacher can employ is to go over some recent published studies and then have the class brainstorm ideas on what variables can be altered; population size, dosage strength, length of the study, and so much more can be altered. This will teach the students how to examine studies-and their methodologies with much more scrutiny. It will also spur some creativity into the next generation; science is in the business of finding solutions, explanations, and improvements after all. For further reading, check out A Field Guide to Lies, it’s a fantastic book that focuses on both experimental design and logical fallacies; it needs to be relentlessly lectured in both science class and philosophy class.
We should also teach our youth that case studies are not the same as peer-reviewed studies. Case studies are essentially just accounts of what happened and they aren’t necessarily controlled experiments. However, the magic word study is what throws a curveball to the layman. I’m not saying that case studies aren’t helpful, they’re used in business school all the time. It’s just that case studies shouldn’t be used to determine scientific-based public discourse. While we’re at it; we need to go over the concept of anecdotal evidence and why it cannot be relied upon to make societal decisions; just because your grandfather smoked a pack-a-day and lived to be 95, that doesn’t mean that smoking isn’t bad for you.
While we’re on the topic of evidence, we should teach students that A study doesn’t prove anything. There are two things wrong with that sentence. First, a study implies one, a given discipline needs numerous studies that all yield the same conclusion before the scientific community will begin to accept the assertions made. Case-in-point; Big Oil loves to hold up a study that is inconclusive on the effects of human activity on climate change, despite the thousands of studies that refute Big Oil’s erroneous claim. This distinction is often either glossed over or isn’t made at all. Secondly, studies don’t prove anything per se; they either support or reject their hypotheses, nothing more. Hollywood loves to sell us the plotline of a failed experiment (cue the horror/monster movie soundtrack!). That is not how that works, and we should teach that in high schools.
Let’s formulate a more scientifically literate society, one classroom at a time.
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